18 April 2013

Talk Talk fined £750,000 by Ofcom for Silent Calls

Talk Talk fell foul of Ofcom's telemarketing rules when subcontracted agencies made c9000 silent and abandoned calls two years ago.

Ofcom, the telecommunications regulator, fined Talk Talk £750,000 for making approximately 9000 silent and abandoned calls to potential customers in between February and March 2011.

The main cause of the problems stemmed from the use of answer machine detection technology within the call centre. These systems are supposed to recognise when a call has been answered by an answer phone and leave an automated message rather than place the call with a telemarketing agent.

Though the calls were actually made by two telemarketing subcontractors, Talk Talk remained liable for the activity and therefore the fines.

Claudio Pollack, Ofcom's Consumer Group Director said: "Silent and abandoned calls can cause annoyance and distress to consumers. Companies must abide by the law and Ofcom's policies. If they fail to do so then Ofcom will take firm action.

"Today's penalty sends out a strong message to organisations using call centres that they must comply or face the consequences.”

According to Ofcom, the average actual fixed line residential broadband speeds obtained by users have nearly doubled in the last two years, from 6.2 Mbit/s in November 2010 to 12.0 Mbit/s in November 2012. This is partly down to the take up of superfast services with 13% of households now using connections with speeds of up to 30 Mbit/s or faster.

If you haven't reviewed your broadband service recently you could get a pleasant surprise with competition in the marketplace driving down prices and increasing speed.